


Nociception

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Drabble Sequence, Episode Related, F/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-28
Updated: 2006-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two types of pain: nociceptive and neuropathic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nociception

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/housefic_pens/profile)[**housefic_pens**](http://community.livejournal.com/housefic_pens/) [drabble challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/housefic_pens/10039.html). Headings from Damien Rice's "Cannonball."

_stones taught me to fly_

After Stacy left the first time, House took a determinedly pragmatic view on sex: when his right hand wasn't enough he went straight to the professionals. It didn't matter whose mouth was wrapped around his prick; he appreciated the efficiency of the call girls the agency sent him.

Long past midnight, if he missed her companionable warmth beside him: her dark head pillowed on his shoulder, or the heady scent of feminine sweat and freesia thick in the air; he stubbornly downed another whiskey, or swallowed another Vicodin, or played another melancholy étude on the baby grand in the corner.

~~~~~

_love it taught me to lie_

When Stacy returned he thought he'd left her behind for good, but when all the repressed emotions roared back with a vengeance he threw his heart into winning her back almost as if she'd never left--her husband and his own fragile recovery from her betrayal be damned.

House took what he could glean from her: her therapist's notes, whispered confessionals, Steve McQueen; all a game that he thought he could win, if it meant she chose him in the end. Culminating in a stolen kiss in a hotel room in Baltimore, success was a heartbeat away, his to take.

~~~~~

_life it taught me to die_

Sex with Stacy was everything he'd remembered, and more: her soft skin glowing in the late evening light, hazel eyes shining as she clutched him, the flutter of her pulse under his lips. Her hands skimming his chest, over his cheek and down his back; they still fit together perfectly, as if she'd never been gone.

House never counted on Mark dragging after him doggedly, determined to hold on where he hadn't; never counted on his own reluctant admission that he would never change for her.

So the second time Stacy left, he felt entirely justified in sending her away.

~~~~~

_so it's not hard to fall_

Wilson had told him to get a hooker, and he did, if only to relieve the lingering twinges of his dalliance into the wacky world of migraine medicine.

The sight of Paula's glossy red lips encircling his dick almost made him come on the spot.

Except he got no further than that; unwilling to accept that the dark head in front of him was not the one he wanted.

Finally, frustrated, he sent Paula away, and hurled the whiskey bottle at the wall.

He sat alone in the twilight, watching the golden liquid trickle into the crevices between the floorboards.

~~~~~

_when you float like a cannonball_

He'd never experienced such searing pain in his thigh since waking up from the muscle debridement.

Frayed nerve fibers in the ugly bundle of scar, shooting bullets of sodium and potassium fire straight to his brain--(_sweet Jesus_) burning alive the old-fashioned way was preferable to this agony, because (_oh holy hell_) nothing deigned to touch it this time.

Defeated and reduced to begging Cuddy for some measure of relief, he refused to admit that he damn near cried as the morphine infused into his spine.

In the end, perhaps he never should have found out about the placebo.


End file.
